No one had expected a single Anthony to throw the entire Los Angeles situation into turmoil.
The Human Torch, Johnny, and the Los Angeles police had been sent chasing their tails. They knew that some of the "hostages" they'd caught had to be the robbers, but they couldn't figure out which ones.
Worse, the media had gotten involved in the livestream. They'd entered the bank and started filming as soon as it was secured.
Aside from the less than five million dollars in cash stolen from the vault, the bank had suffered no significant losses.
But the "evidence" the robbers had left in an open safe sent shock waves through Los Angeles politics.
It contained Anthony's "connections": a ledger recording the favors he'd secured with money and violence over the past thirty years. Among the names were people in a host of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Police Station, the DEA, Customs, the Coast Guard, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
It was a record of bribery stretching back thirty years—and a weapon powerful enough to ruin the reputations of countless people.
Most damning of all, it included documents showing how Anthony's family real estate company had colluded with a congressman to embezzle postwar reconstruction funds and persecute civilians who'd lost their homes in the war.
As everyone knew, real estate in the United States included the land itself. An alien war could destroy a house, but the land would still be there.
Ellis had originally passed a postwar relief bill, dividing fifty billion dollars between Miami and Los Angeles to help residents rebuild their homes.
A large portion of Los Angeles's twenty-five billion dollars had gone toward rebuilding infrastructure. Even though only a small amount remained, it was still enough for residents to rebuild